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Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam 2023 (BSA 2023)

Definition

India's evidence law replacing the Indian Evidence Act 1872, governing admissibility of expert testimony (Section 39) including forensic phonetic evidence. Does not impose a Daubert-equivalent science-validation gatekeeping requirement, leaving admissibility of phonetic evidence to case-by-case judicial discretion.

Related terms

Code-Switching
Shifting between different registers or even different languages within an interaction, often as a signal of role or authority. An interviewer who...
Criminal Procedure Rules Part 19
The English and Welsh procedural rules governing expert evidence in criminal proceedings. They impose a duty on the expert to help the...
Daubert Standard
The US federal evidentiary standard (Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, 1993) requiring that expert testimony be based on scientifically valid methods with...
DyViS Corpus
The Dynamic Variability in Speech corpus (Nolan et al., 2009), a UK English speaker database collected under conditions designed to simulate forensic...
Federal Rule of Evidence 702
The US federal rule governing expert testimony. As amended through 2023, it requires that expert opinion be based on sufficient facts or...
Formant
A resonance peak in the vocal tract filter; F1 and F2 together characterise vowel quality (height and frontness), while F3 and higher...
Frye Test
An admissibility standard derived from Frye v United States (DC Cir 1923) requiring that a scientific technique must have gained general acceptance...
Gatekeeping Role
The function assigned to the trial judge under Daubert and FRE 702 to assess whether proposed expert evidence meets the reliability threshold...
IAFPA (International Association of Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics)
The professional organisation for forensic phoneticians, founded in 1991 following the collapse of the voiceprint paradigm. Maintains a code of conduct, annual...
Lexical Tone
A tone system in which F0 patterns carry word-meaning distinctions. Mandarin (four tones) and Punjabi (three tones) are the forensically most common...
Long-Term Average Spectrum (LTAS)
The averaged spectral energy distribution across a long recording segment, capturing the habitual spectral envelope of a speaker's voice. Useful as a...
Praat
Open-source acoustic analysis software developed by Paul Boersma and David Weenink at the University of Amsterdam, used by virtually all forensic phoneticians...

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